Jonmichael Moy: You can now get a Spotify playlist inspired by your ancestors

Tuesday, 25 September 2018

You can now get a Spotify playlist inspired by your ancestors

As genetic profiling has become increasingly accessible over the past few years, consumer DNA tests have grown in popularity, with a number of companies providing detailed breakdowns of everything from your ethnic heritage to your dietary nuances.

One of the most popular services is Ancestry, which started out as a family tree database and can now estimate your ancestral origins in exchange for a saliva sample.

Now, as well as telling you about your family history, Ancestry has teamed up with Spotify to create customized playlists based on the regions from which your DNA sample suggests your ancestors originated.

Spit it out

To get your personalized playlist along with a rundown of your genetic heritage, you have to send a saliva sample to Ancestry in the post, with the service costing $99 (£79 / AU$129) plus shipping.

After around six weeks your results are emailed to you, not only telling you the regions your ancestors came from, but also allowing you to connect with potential family members on Ancestry’s 10 million-strong user database.

Once you have your results, head to the dedicated webpage and enter the regions that came up in your DNA profiling – the website then generates a playlist of songs associated with those regions via Spotify.

Musical tradition

Consumer DNA testing isn’t for everyone – you might be worried about your personal data or not be willing to pay to find out what you may already know about your heritage – and if you do have a rough idea of your ethnic origins, you can still generate a playlist: simply select the regions you think your family is from and your playlist will be generated.

We tried it out with an educated guess about our own ancestry and we received an interesting and varied mix of traditional and modern songs from around the world, which is a pretty novel way of discovering new music, and maybe tuning in to your unique ancestral descent.

Of course, making a guess as to your ancestry will never be as accurate as legitimate DNA profiling, but it does make for an interesting way to create your next favorite music playlist.